Apple Breaks Ground on 1-Million-Square-Foot Texas Outpost

Over the past few weeks, Apple has started work on a new 39-acre campus that will be the future home of the company’s America’s Operations Center. No, Apple isn’t ditching Cupertino. That remains the site of the company’s global headquarters and it’s where the company is erecting a new 2.8-million-square-foot building that looks an awful lot like a spaceship. But Austin will eventually be home to a major portion of the Apple empire.

Apple has run an operations center in Austin for years now. It already employs about 3,500 hardware engineers, support staff and operations people there. But the new buildings will add another 1 million square feet of office space in Austin. And within 10 years, that should mean another 3,600 jobs for the company, bringing Austin’s headcount to 7,100.

“To put it in perspective, prior to the Apple announcement, the largest single job creation from one project was 1,000,” says Brian Gildea, Austin’s economic development manager.

In exchange, Apple gets more than $30 million in tax breaks.

But the planning documents leave a lot out. They don’t, for example, mention that Austin is already a center of Apple’s support and hardware development groups. Apple is presently hiring nearly 40 hardware engineers in Austin, including chip designers and power-optimization engineers

Although Apple’s Cupertino headquarters will be shaped like a sleek ring, the Austin campus will be more terrestrial, says Gildea. “I asked that question right off,” he says. Apple’s current Austin building looks pretty much like any other office building in town. Gildea doesn’t expect any wild designs in the new set of buildings, which will be constructed over the next 10 years. “While they may not look like the existing buildings, they’re not going to be outlandish,” he says.

Apple has pulled three construction permits on the new campus — the most recent one just last week — and has started preliminary work on the site, county and city planners say.

In its development agreement with the city, Apple says that the new facility will be the overflow for Apple’s America operations outside of its Cupertino, California, headquarters. “The company requires an operational center to centralize various functions, such as accounting, human resources and finance,” Apple wrote in a description of the $287 million project, filed with city planners.

But the planning documents leave a lot out. They don’t, for example, mention that Austin is already a center of Apple’s support and hardware development groups. Apple is presently hiring nearly 40 hardware engineers in Austin, including chip designers and power-optimization engineers.

Under the terms of Apple’s economic development agreement with Austin, Apple will first build a $56 million 200,000-square-foot facility in two buildings. That’s set to be done by the end of 2015. “Phase II will be up to 800,000 square feet in several buildings,” Apple says in planning documents. It will be completed by the end of 2021.

The Apple deal is one of the most significant commercial development projects started in Austin this year, says Jeff Coddington, senior vice president for investment properties with Austin realtor Oxford Commercial. “It’s a huge vote of confidence in our region and a terrific corporate citizen to have as a partner in our city.”

Although Apple CEO Tim Cook has been talking about bringing Mac manufacturing operations back to North America recently, this new Austin campus isn’t zoned for manufacturing, says Austin’s Gildea.

“Our operations in Austin have grown dramatically over the past decade, from less than 1,000 employees in 2004 to more than 3,500 today,” Apple said in an e-mailed statement. “We’re looking forward to building a new campus in Austin, which will more than double the size of our workforce there over the next decade.”